Berkeley Lab Search

President Obama has named Andrew Sessler, award-winning theoretical physicist, acclaimed humanitarian, and former director of Berkeley Lab, as a recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award, the government’s oldest and most prestigious prizes for scientific achievement.
.

President Obama named four Berkeley Lab-affiliated researchers as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

This year’s recently announced American Physical Society (APS) Fellows includes five scientists from Berkeley Lab, two from the Materials Sciences Division and one each from the Accelerator and Fusion Research, Nuclear Science, and Engineering divisions. APS Fellows are elected by their peers for “exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise; e.g., outstanding physics research, important applications of physics, leadership in or service to physics, or significant contributions to physics education.”

Carolyn Bertozzi and George Smoot are among 143 new Fellows of the fledgling National Academy of Inventors. The honor, for which they were nominated by their peers, is based on their history of outstanding inventions and discoveries.

Three Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers have been named 2013 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

On Wednesday, Oct. 9, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for pioneering methods in computational chemistry that have brought a deeper understanding of complex chemical structure and reactions in biochemical systems. These methods can precisely calculate how very complex molecules work and even predict the outcomes of very complex chemical reactions. One of the laureates — Martin Karplus of Harvard University — has been using supercomputers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab since 1998.

The Nobel Prize in Physics to François Englert and Peter Higgs cites confirmation of their work by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, in what Physics Division Director Natalie Roe calls “a powerful testament to human imagination, innovation, perseverance and international cooperation.” Berkeley Lab provides one of the largest U.S. contingents to ATLAS, led by Ian Hinchliffe. Berkeley Lab’s Physics, Accelerator, and Engineering Divisions have made and continue to make vital contributions to the LHC.

Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley physicist Kam-Biu Luk has been named by the American Physical Society to be a recipient of the 2014 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in experimental particle physics. He and Yifang Wang of China’s Institute of High Energy Physics will share the prize for their leadership roles in the Daya Bay neutrino experiment.

A Berkeley Lab physicist who developed a way to digitally restore old audio recordings that are too fragile to play was named a MacArthur “genius” Fellow today (Wednesday, Sept. 25). Carl Haber, a senior scientist in the Physics Division, is among 24 recipients to receive the prestigious award – $625,000 in unrestricted funds over the next five years – by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

A generator that uses a virus to convert mechanical energy to electricity and a new material that will boost power storage in rechargeable batteries by 30 percent are among eight inventions by Berkeley Lab scientists that were honored with a 2013 R&D 100 Award, often dubbed the “Oscars of Innovation.”